


Got You Like A Habit

by ruric



Category: Actor RPF, Kane (Band)
Genre: Community: comment_fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-10
Updated: 2009-06-10
Packaged: 2017-11-14 17:00:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/517513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruric/pseuds/ruric
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Chris, you can't just buy me a guitar every time you screw up, you know.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Got You Like A Habit

The first packet arrives exactly three months after the morning of scorched-earth apocalyptic hangovers, furiously yelled words, slammed doors and shattered glass.

His name and address are scrawled in hand writing he’d recognise anywhere and it says something about how things are now that Steve lifts the envelope to his ear, head tilted to one side, and listens to it for a moment, before holding it carefully and ripping it open.

It contains nothing more incendiary than a small box, no bigger than 2 inches square. He flips the envelope and it drops into his hand, easy enough the flick the lid off with his thumb and look inside. It’s a fridge magnet, in the shape of a silver steel guitar, tacky and cheap, with Las Vegas blazed across the body. 

He smacks it onto the fridge with enough force to make his fingers sting and dumps everything else in the trash.

A month later there’s another, slightly bigger packet. 

This time he doesn’t bother listening to it, just shakes it and feels the box move inside. He’s curious enough to open it and let the 3 inch square drop into his palm. He doesn’t check for a note – he knows there won’t be one – and the box contains a little white plastic guitar, obviously Mexican, with wobbly red lettering marking its origin in the tourist shops of Cancun. 

He puts it on the kitchen table and makes coffee, then has to rescue it from the cat who’s batting it around like a football. He finally settles on leaving it on a high shelf away well away from curious paws.

The next is dull, red, unglazed terracotta. It’s a little rough, a little unformed, but beautiful in an imperfect way and his lips might just twitch into the merest of smiles remembering the good times.

They continue to arrive regularly, once a month without fail. 

Each packet is just a little bigger than the last, each containing some kind of guitar and nothing else. He’s getting quite a collection – plastic, tin, copper, terracotta, ceramic, each worth a few bucks more than the previous one. 

When the sixth one arrives he stops leaving them randomly round the house in any space available. He clears a place on the wooden mantelpiece over the fire, and puts them in a little group. 

By the ninth month the packets have turned into parcels, the cheap souvenirs morphing into more expensive and exquisitely crafted items, wooden bodies polished, frets with real strings attached. They’re not playable, but looking at these small versions his hands itch because he can imagine how the full sized guitars would feel and can almost hear the tones they would make.

The collection is spilling across the mantelpiece now.

When he’s sprawled on the couch in the evening trying to find the words to make a lyric work, or the right notes that will force the buzz of a barely heard refrain at the back of his skull into his fingers, he can see the light glinting off them from the corner of his eye. Sometimes they taunt him with the promise of music he can’t hear no matter how hard he tries, something they give him the answer he’s been searching for.

The twelfth month brings a lute, honey gold wood of the body set off by the black ebony of the neck and the warm cherry red of the curved back. The sound it makes is sweetly soft and sends him rummaging through his shelves of CDs to find some baroque music because he has an idea how he can thread those more classical melodies into a couple of the pieces he’s working on now.

Thirteen might be unlucky for some, but not for him, because he gets a mandolin. 

Burnished red spruce and warm tones of maple, silver plated hardware and engraved mother of pearl – everything about it screams of years of craftsmanship and care. He has to pause, take a breath, curling his fingers into a fist to stop them shaking before he can flex them and lift it from its case. He doesn’t need a pick, just lets his thumb drift down over the strings and fingers turn the pegs to make it sing.

Month fourteen and it’s a uke and he can’t help but laugh. 

Looking at it reawakens memories of listening to jazz and Elvis, of the time he spent in Hawai’i finding people who could teach him how to master it. The unique sound that could even be heard above their version of bandit country and the way Chris rolled his eyes whenever it came out of its case.

Month fifteen and he’s exhausted. 

He’s spent the last three weeks in Vegas, working on laying down new songs. Fourteen to sixteen hour days in the studio playing ‘til his hands cramped and he couldn’t feel his fingers, voice cracking and now reduced to no more than a whisper. His skin is pale, his eyes feel dry and he wants to do nothing more than sit on the deck, bask in the sun and write a few undemanding jingles for a month or so.

The sudden, loud hammering at the door doesn’t so much ask for entrance as indicate that if it’s not opened the door isn’t going to be there for much longer.

Steve yanks it open, midday sunlight spilling across the porch and he’s blinking against the sudden glare.

“You look like shit.”

Steve huffs a soft laugh as Chris elbows his way past, guitar case bumping his legs as Steve turns to follow letting the door slam behind them.

It might be after midday but it’s far too early to deal without the first coffee of the day and the rumble of his belly reminds him he’s not eaten since lunch yesterday. So he continues fixing brunch and if he’s watching Chris take in the collection on the mantle, the instruments on their stands, well, Chris is in his house now. 

It’s no surprise that Chris steals the first cup of coffee, or that he notices the scattering of CDs on the table. He doesn’t ask, he never does, just picks one up, flips it open and slides the CD into the player before sitting down at the table, back resting against the wall.

Steve’s never particularly liked listening to his own recordings. 

He lives for the gigs in front of an audience, no matter how big or small, for the jam sessions with friends and strangers. Part of him will always believe that music should be heard live, that perfect synthesis of a performer or band hitting the right moment, on the right day, in front of the right crowd when everything just...happens. You can’t capture that and replicate it.

Hot coffee slides down his throat and the world comes a little more into focus. 

He doubles up the cooking, omelettes for two instead of one, whips up some salsa and green salad on the side. Chris’s fingers are keeping perfect time drumming against the table, head thrown back, eyes closed the way he always listens to music, losing himself in it – total fucking submersion.

Steve flips the omelettes onto the plates, carries them over to the table, slides one in front of Chris, keeps one for himself and hits stop on the CD player.

He’s sitting down as Chris’s eyes open, pupils wide and black seeing through him, until they narrow and Chris comes back from where ever he was. Steve watches him shove a forkful of food into his mouth and he finds himself listening for the little hum of contentment that home cooking always seems to bring forth. Sure enough there it is.

“It’s good.”

Steve raises an eyebrow not sure whether that’s directed at the food or the music and though Chris tries to deadpan he can read the humor in the crinkle of laughter at the corner of Chris’s eyes.

“Both are good, asshole. You fucked your voice up again?”

“No – it’s not so bad.”

Except that his words show too clearly the lie. He sounds like he’s got an 80-a-day habit plus laryngitis. 

“Yeah...right.” 

Chris tips his chin to where the guitar case is leaning against the couch and it’s not like he doesn’t recognise it. First big check Chris had hit, after they started playing together, and he’d dragged Steve out insisting that he bought them both guitars. It’d been in Chris’s house in Nashville when they’d had the fight and Steve would be damned if he’d ask for it back. It was only one of many he now owned but it did have a sweet sound, and a history.

“Thought you might want it back if we’re gonna play together again.”

If they are this is the first Steve’s hearing about it.

“Chris, you can't just buy me a guitar every time you screw up, you know.”

That gets him the patented Chris Kane I-will-fuck-your-shit-up _look_. The narrowed eyed, thousand yard stare, dusting of red staining his cheeks but there’s more than warmth in the eyes that meet his. There’s hunger too.

“Who said anything about _me_ screwing up?”

And it’s so utterly fucking perfectly Chris, perfectly them, that Steve laughs. God knows how many years now, neither of them are counting, and neither of them have quite discovered how to walk away yet.

He’s not sure who moves first, only that there are fingers tugging at his shirt as his own are searching for hot skin. The clatter of plates and CDs hitting the floor is unnaturally loud amid panted breaths and fingers pushing clothes aside.

Chris’s mouth is as hot as a furnace, lips closing over the pulse in Steve’s neck, the graze of teeth sending a shudder down his spine. Steve’s fingers wind into long hair and tug 'til he can see into blue eyes.

“Chris...”

“Save your voice, you’re gonna need it for the gigs.”

Gigs not albums and Chris’s got that self-satisfied smirk on his face that Steve knows only too well.

“Fuck you.”

“Oh yeah, you bet. Later.”


End file.
